It probably depends on the area. Club owners in LA pay a hefty price to do business.

Rent: $14-$25,000 per month (Avg. $2.89-$3.25 per Rentable Square Foot, Full Service Gross or Triple-Net).
Parking: $8-$10,000 per month (if they have it).
Liquor License: $10-$15,000 per month
Advertising: $2-$4,000+ per month

Then there are salaries, Workers' Compensation insurance, property insurance, utilities, bartenders, security, and general maintenance. I'll bet there are things I've forgotten, but you get the idea. It's expensive to do business.

Fans pay $10-$20 to park, $7-$20 for ONE drink (2 drink minimum), and a $7-$15 cover charge.

Bands pay anywhere from $250 - $450 to play a 30-minute set. Should the band exceed ticket sales required to make the fee, then they have that in their own pockets before they even take the stage. In this case, it depends on how hard you hustle.

In the mid-range clubs, you must draw at least 20-30 or pay the difference to the door. Then you make $2-$3 a head after that.

Sure, we could play a low-end bar like McRed's in the Valley and make more money for less effort. We could also play cover tunes at weddings and clear BIG bucks. But it's not about that for us. It's about getting maximum exposure, all the while being in the pursuit of something greater than what can be made at the door.

For the experience in the smaller city, my college band played in and around Muncie, Indiana in 1984-85. We commanded $900-$1,500 per night at clubs like Papa Louie's Chug-A-Mug and made anywhere from $3-$7,000 for a house party on Frat Row (charging guys-only at the door).

But we didn't get to this level right away. We paid our dues, developed our fan-base, and then we had something to bargain with. Being able to guarantee a packed house of rabid drinkers does give you ample leverage. It doesn't hurt to become a savvy businessman with solid negotiation skills (stay in school!).

At our last gig, we could have made a few hundred bucks. Instead, we told the door man to let everyone in for free after we met the 20 required. We want to get more people interested in our original music so we can draw bigger next time, and even bigger the time after that.

For us, the money says nothing. Until it's in the form of a contract, it is meaningless. It's that crowd standing in front of us that speaks volumes.

So what does a band REALLY deserve to be paid? Depends on what they can draw and what they can negotiate.

First, if I screw up appropriately posting a quote or something, PLEASE bear with me. I'm relatively new here, so I'm still getting used to how this thing works. For instance, I'm still trying to learn to properly insert a quote. For now, I'll just "cheat", LOL.

From Louderdb:

"Man I'm lovin this guy!   Right on! Right on! Right on!"

LOL, thank you! Uh, if that was directed toward me.

Obviously, if you can't tell, while I understand the club owner has expenses, overhead, etc. I'm still primarily on the side of the musician. LOL, maybe 'cause I am one.

As for "paying your dues", I do NOT disagree with drumwild. But what IS "paying your dues"? I don't necessarily think it's playing every backwater bar for "$50+ beer", until someone FINALLY discovers you.

For my own "defense" here, and to make sure I'm not taken inaccurately, let me say that I'm just another friggin' drummer. I DON'T think that "I'm all that and a bag o' chips", or that I'm better or know more or whatever. I don't really have ANY ego about my playing, I just play and hope folks like what they hear. I HAVE been playing quite a few years (27 this year, and that's WITH a 16 year hiatus where I didn't even own a pair of drumsticks. Yeah, I'm an old dude, LOL), as many of you have. So we've ALL seen the good times and bad, and all have some success as well as some horror stories to tell.

But  what I'm seeing lately on the local music scene around here really disheartens me for ALL the local musicians, not just myself or our band. For ALL the dudes and dudettes, LOL.

IMO, any cat that tells me he's been playing 15 or 20 years (maybe 10 or 8, I don't know where the cutoff date would be) HAS paid his / her friggin' dues. You tell me you're in a working band, or a recording band, or playing with a big name, know what I see? I see a cat that's spent THOUSANDS of hours learning his instrument. A person who's spent god knows how many hours hitting auditions or jam nights or on the phone looking, searching and trying to find just that 'right' mix. They've spent YEARS honing and developing themselves in (likely) a drummer or guitarist that I would bestow upon them the ultimate compliment I can bestow upon a fellow musician. "Brother, you can PLAY".

And all this time and effort and headache and sometimes heartache (yeah, I've had relationships break up over my persuing the chance to play just ONE more time on stage), for WHAT? For $100 for a 4 hour set?

Drumwild, IMO reading his post, has PAID his doggone dues! So have MANY of you here, reading the various posts I've read. So why is it not fair for these same people to get p-a-i-d for their work?

This guy or that gal has spent years learning, educating and developing their TALENT, something which not just ANYONE can do, yet as a general rule we let others, some club owner or something, tell us it's only worth $100. Would a doctor let someone tell them that? Or a lawyer? Was YOUR skill any less difficult to gain than the lawyer down the street from you. 'Cause I'll bet it wasn't.

Sure, the bar owner has to make a buck to stay open. Understood, that's a given. But ONE of the reasons I'm (you, us, etc.) showing up "there" is to MAKE him a buck. But hey, it's NOT unfair for YOU to make a buck, too! In fact, truth be told, you should probably make MORE (after overhead is discounted), 'cause you likely have a lot more of your blood and sweat in your business than he has in his! Sorry, never heard of a bar owner sleeping in his car for 6 months trying to get his business up and running. I sure have heard of a lot of musicians doing that, or something similar. Just to pursue their craft.

Had a bar owner friend back in the early 80's ask me if my band would play at his club. He was doing pretty well, and several months before had told me he was hauling in about $20,000 a week, just for bottled Lite beer sales. He offered us $500 to play at his club. Sorry, I turned that down flat, even though I know that sounds egotistical. We were already getting (at the time) about 3 times that per gig. I wasn't insulted because of the $500, I was insulted that he offered so little when HE knew *I* knew what kind of money he was raking in, and would rake in.

Today, if someone we know is having a birthday party in their back yard, and we're asked to come play, fine. We'll come play for free. I'll go play at a jam night if someone says they'd like to hear me play, and the band isn't doing anything. Just because they were nice enough to say they'd like to hear me / us play. I'm honored and humbled by the fact that even one person would ask. But that's different. When it becomes a BUSINESS venture, then I think we as musicians should be compensated FAIRLY for what we do. Just as ANYONE else would expect.

I know SOME bands will play for nothing or almost nothing "for the exposure". Personally, I think that's foolhardy, penny-wise and pound foolish. You can get just as much exposure getting paid as you can playing for free. Had a couple of friends' bands (good bands, by the way) play at Taste of Chicago this year. For free, "for the exposure". LOL, they BOTH regret doing so now, and are NO further along, in popularity or financially, because of it. A multimillion dollar production, and they let themselves get talked into playing for ZERO dollars. Told them both the same thing, "That was stupid." Reluctantly, they agreed.

And there's a further downside, IMO. If you get yourself established as a band that plays for $150 ALL the time, guess what you're gonna get offered most of the time? 'Cause if you don't think the local club owners talk to one another, you're sorely mistaken. In fact, the 3 largest and most succesful club owners in our area all used to own ONE bar together! They pal around each others' bars all the time. Trust me, they talk!

Obviously, some folks will disagree, even vehemently perhaps. So these are just my own perspectives. But it's my opinion that if the bands would start learning to "band together" and realize that if *I* hacksaw our pay for a job, I'm also hurting THEIR band, and vice versa, then maybe it'll start to change. I think ONE good way to do this is talk about it here.

Thanks for reading this long post, if you did. It's something I strongly believe in.

Curiously enough, if ALL bands refused to "pay to play", they'd still be playing. If ALL bands refused to play for free, they'd still get gigs. And be making money. 'Cause the club owners may BRIEFLY say "Well, then I'm not having bands", but when business started seriously falling off, the club owners would change their tune, quickly.

In fact, when DJ's first came out, lots of musicians said "Oh, man. That's, it, that's the end of live music at the local level." Oddly enough, the reverse of that is true, and live music has been gaining in popularity over the last years.

When drum machines came out, drummers started panicking. "Oh man, we're all gonna be out a job. Better start learning to bag fries." But that hasn't really happened, has it? And drummers are pretty sought after in general, aren't they?

To me, to address another topic on the forum as well, when bands cutthroat each other and play for nothing, or worse PAY to play, THEN they're "selling out". They're giving themselves away, whoring out, or worse, PAYING to give themselves away! IMO, that's the worst form of "selling out", saying that one's time, energy, hardwork and creative energy are worth nothing. Or in the case of paying to play, LESS than nothing.

LOL, just a thought, but if ya gotta pay to get people to listen to ya, maybe it's not really worth listening to in the first place?

Just my thoughts, once again.

I think it's important to try to see all sides, AND be knowledgable of those sides prior to venting.  All of us, as musicians, get frustrated because the chips are, indeed, stacked against us.  All clubowners, however, are not out to get you.  Everyone here makes good points, and here are a few more from someone who is not only a professional drummer, but was involved with the ownership of a 1000 capacity venue.  

"who are they coming to see, the club owner?"  -where are they coming to see you, your backyard?  Like it or not, you and the much-hated clubowner are helping EACH OTHER.  They're not lucky to have you, because there's other bands.  You're not lucky to have them, there's other clubs.  The popularity or desirablilty of one will give it leverage over the other.


You can't use "beer sales" as the ever-popular swing vote.  One of the groups I play for has a young audience, and we can come to town, put 600 bodies in the room and not 1 of them will be drinking.  Not all shows are big bar $.

If you thought your band was the *hit and wanted to put on a show without using the evil club's resources, you can do it, just as soon as you find a place and rent it for the night, print up you tix, pay for some radio bumps, throw up some flyers, rent a PA, get a liquor & beer liscense, hire a security staff, build a stage, get a lighting rig, hire an electrician to hook everything up, pay for power or a generator, rent port o' johns or pay for water and sewage, buy insurance covering everyone in the venue (including jackasses and idiots)....  see where this is headed?  good.  It's a 2 way street, like it or not.  try and find the local club owner that doesn't suck and work a door deal with him, like I said before.

Too bad, man.  that seemed like you had something good going.  In a town where there is NO bar or venue, you pretty much have to do what you did, and it seems you did it right.  In towns where bars exist and draw fairly well on their own, the DIY approach usually falls short because it costs too much to do, thus my previous post.    Good luck.

I know this doesn't relate to the average experience, but this is what's happening in my neck of the woods (I don't drive a Mercedes, either), just in case anyone ever ends up here.

The agent for my other original band DELTA 9 is setting up a gig for us at The Whisky for later this month. This is a pay-to-play venue, which means we'll probably pay $350 to do a 25-minute set.

What happens is they give us a big stack of tickets that are priced to sell at $10 each. I know that we can sell about 150. But let's suppose that we're feeling lazy and only sell 80 tickets.

80 X $10 = $800
$800 - $350 = $450

We pay them after the show and keep the rest. This $450 will pay for a 24-hour rehearsal/lockout for an entire month. Not bad for a 25-minute performance. That's also not bad for playing original tunes instead of covers.

The club will sell drinks, etc., but they won't make any more off us than the $350. However, we have the option of selling as many tickets as we want, so the sky is the limit. They can't touch any of the ticket sales beyond the 35 we give them.

But what we'll do is sell until a day or two before the gig. Then we take the tickets with us to the club and give them away to the club-goers in order to entice new fans. The sidewalks outside the club are always packed with people who would gladly accept free admission to any of these venues!

With the new fans, we can probably do a little better next time:
125 x $10 = $1,250
$1,250 - $350 = $900

The extra funds can go toward strings, heads, etc., or we can pay the rent ahead.

Even if the club offered us $10 per minute to play ($250), we would be getting the short end of the stick. Most bands playing in a club can't make $10/minute! While this isn't exactly getting rich, it is helping us keep our music alive.

There are other clubs where pay isn't necessary, but they do have their expectations. They could even ask you to pay the difference if your draw is low. We can go further away from the city and make more money, but they will require us to play some covers.

More cover tunes means more money. I leave the cover tunes and the related money to the cover bands I work with (that's what they're all about!).

To a degree, money talks to us. But it also talks to the club owners.

I too have seen other clubowners driving nice cars.  Most that i know of in that situation draw their $ from somewhere else, sometimes in not-so-legal ways.  My sister, who ran her business fairly and in a band-friendly way, drove an Explorer and never screwed a band in her 6 years of owning a very successful club in Va.  She had all sizes of bands, from local frat jams to 311, Smashing Pumkins, Dave Matthews (quite early on, of course) etc.  and ultimately left the business, partially because with things like payroll and insurance, the market became progressively more costly for her to do business and she wasn't going to screw the little guy.  The guy she sold it to blew it and it closed in 6 months, after a 20 year success run.  This is only to point out that some good ones are out there.  That being said, I'm a musician first and foremost, and we are in a position to be screwed, which is why I think the door deal works best.  It's also a way to up your price without ever talking to the owner.  Put more people in there, make more $.  maybe other areas and bands have better success, I only offered my opinion after spending the last 12 years in vans, trucks, and finally buses and planes, as well as being in on "the other side".  To whoever started this thread, I like the door deal, 7 best of luck to you.

I have found the door percentage method is pretty solid, but with a guarantee added in as well.  In college, the clubs paid us $600 guaranteed against 80% of the door.  That's to say we got a minimum of $600, regardless of the door take.  If the door take was higher, we got 80% of the the door.  I realize the expenses of owning a club, so I never had a problem with the owner keeping 20%, even on nights when we would have 500 or more peole at shows @ $5 a pop. (That's $2000 for the band and $500 for the club).  The music scene is fierce and fickle.  Some nights only 100 people might show up and the club is out $100 to the band.  It's a wash and works out in the end.  If you're good and popular the club will realize this and pay accordingly.  But for every band that is willing to walk away from $$ from a club, there are 10 waiting to take your place.